When in BA...contact Janis!

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When in Buenos Aires, do yourself a favour and contact Janis Kenyon. She loves meeting new people and is one of the kindest, most helpful people that you'll meet.

https://jantango.wordpress.com/2017/05/10/look-me-up-when-you-visit-buenos-aires/

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So...here's a thing...

So...here's a thing... A 2-hour video (you can watch it in small bites) where 6 women talk about their experiences as black and/or gay women in tango. Much of it is about not being asked to dance (mostly by men), even though they have done lots of lessons, including private lessons. There are a number of great ideas raised, such as 'if everyone just asked ONE PERSON per night to dance, that they don't normally dance with, then everyone gets to dance!' and 'we need more kindness and inclusivity at milongas!'. ( I absolutely agree.) But mostly it's complaining about not being asked to dance by men, with the explicit assumption that it's because they're black. The thing is, while they talk about other women-friends providing alternative reasons why this might be the case like 'perhaps it's because you're tall', there doesn't seem to be any point where they've ... ...asked the men who don't dance with them...why t...

Buenos Aires Folktales

I thought that I'd write about popular stories about Buenos Aires that I was told before I went there and still see perpetuated on websites in many countries. Some tango scenes that we've visited seem to be trying to be more BA than BA, itself. I need to highlight, in case it's not obvious, that this post is based on my experience on many trips to BA since 2004. I've watched and danced in a wide range of milongas, from very touristy through to almost completely local, in downtown and in the barrios. Perhaps these stories came from before that time but I can't really comment on that. Your experiences may conflict with mine, particularly if they extend to before that time, but that's the great thing about the internet. Write about it and tell me stories of your own. The Short Version A condensed version of this post can be contained in the experience of a dear friend on her first visit from New York.. We arranged to meet at a particular milonga and we danced a...

Travel Tales/Finding One's Way

A friend of mine returned from another city recently and told how while at a Milonga she sat for a long time without being asked. She spent the time watching couples dancing and noticed that the men weren't actually leading. They each did a slightly different pattern over and over and their partners just walked it for them, without regard to connection. Eventually she was asked to dance, she remembered the guy's pattern and walked it for him. He was deeply impressed, told her that she was an amazing dancer and subsequently told all his friends. Each of them asked her to dance, she repeated the patterns for them that she had committed to memory earlier, and each of them was similarly deeply impressed. She hardly sat down again! I told her that it must have felt good to be so popular and she shrugged noncommittally, "but they weren't leading, so...it wasn't really dancing..." How do leaders improve if they can't trust their followers to follow? How do f...

Tango Life

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